Sunday, September 04, 2005

A Portrait of Mary Lou McDonald

Under the title Elusive Mary, the Sunday Business Post paints a portrait of SF MEP Mary Lou McDonald. There is very little about McDonald's views on the EU, but we learn some interesting facts about the SF MEP. For example, the article starts with the difficulty to access Mrs McDonald and notes that " the notion that one of the party's brightest stars is not in charge of her own media destiny is difficult to swallow." On the issue of speaking rights in the Dail, an issue that McDonald seems to be commited to continue to press, the journalist has some interesting comments: "Sinn Fein acknowledged last month that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was correct and that Adams was wrong on the issue of MPs and MEPs from the North having speaking rights in the Dail. Following remarks by Adams, Ahern said there had been “much exaggerated comment'‘ on the issue. What the government had in mind, he said, was much more modest than a right to speak in the Dail, such as the right to address Dail committees. Despite clearly overplaying its hand, Sinn Fein plans to continue to seek Dail speaking rights. McDonald said this right was being claimed for MPs from all political parties, not in an attempt to secure special rights for republican representatives. “Some commentators and some people who are hostile to this notion developed whether deliberately or otherwise a very overblown sense of what was being talked about, for their own political reasons.”"